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The Schwartz Cloud Reportby Jeffrey Schwartz, Executive Editor

Rackspace Hosting Acquires SharePoint911

Rackspace Hosting is getting deeper into the SharePoint consulting business. The hosting and cloud provider on Thursday said it has acquired SharePoint911, a well-regarded boutique firm that provides enterprises with SharePoint consulting, custom development, design, implementation and training services.

Six of its consultants are Microsoft MVPs who have authored numerous books and are frequent speakers at industry events. Rackspace first started offering managed SharePoint services in 2008. The acquisition of SharePoint911 gives Rackspace a staff of experienced SharePoint consultants who have architected numerous SharePoint projects for customers.

In a blog post announcing the deal, Young indicated he welcomed the resources of a large provider such as Rackspace. "SharePoint911 was founded on the principle that the complexities of SharePoint should not limit the solution's success within an organization," Young said. "With the support of Rackspace, we look forward to continuing that mission and spreading our capabilities within Fanatical Support to our current and future customers."

Rackspace CTO John Engates said in the blog post that SharePoint911 would extend the company's application delivery service capabilities. "SharePoint911 will add the talent and expertise to our teams to make SharePoint deployments easier for our customers while increasing their scalability and performance through better integration of the workload and infrastructure," Young said.

It is not clear whether Rackspace intends to focus its SharePoint consulting offering on managed and cloud-based implementations or whether it will have its consultants continue to work on premises-based engagements. Officials at Rackspace and SharePoint911 did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.